The End of Conservatism

So, let's see: Massive government action at home—including a Medicaid prescription drug plan and a Patriot Act at war with civil liberties. Massive US military action overseas—including foreign occupation and"nation-building." And now: Massive legislative action—by means of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

I'm no conservative, but there is nothing conservative about the activist methods that this President has used to enact his interventionist agenda.

More Comments:

Chris Matthew Sciabarra -
2/25/2004

The thing is, Jonathan, there isn't anything intellectually or methodologically "conservative" about the Bush administration. It's ideological roots are more Woodrow Wilson than Barry Goldwater. Perhaps we can call this neither conservatism, nor paleoconservatism, nor neoconservatism. It's "post-ism"... and it combines the worst of right and left.

Jonathan Dresner -
2/24/2004

You're conflating ideological conservativism with methodological conservativism. Sometimes, to be conservative, you have to be activist. Which is oxymoronic, but that's the best you get with our pitiful political vocabulary.